CU Boulder Peak to Peak Lecture in Steamboat Springs, Colorado
Does God Make Mistakes?
and
Does Christianity Matter for Judaism - and Vice Versa?
August 18 and 19, 2017
Spiritual Life Center at the Heart of Steamboat United Methodist Church | 736 Oak Street, Steamboat Springs, CO 80487
The University of Colorado Boulder’s Peak to Peak Lecture Series presented two opportunities to learn with CU Boulder professor, Elias Sacks, August 18 and 19, 2017 in Steamboat Spring, Colorado. Both events took place at the Spiritual Life Center at the Heart of Steamboat-United Methodist Church.
Does God Make Mistakes? Should God Repent?
Friday, August 18, 2017, at 5 p.m.
The High Holidays are a time when Jews gather together to reflect on their lives, engage in teshuvah (repentance), and vow to do better. But are people the only ones called to repent? Does God also make mistakes? If so, does God have to repent? As we enter the High Holiday season, we will explore ancient and modern views on these questions, asking whether God, too, has regrets and should be engaging in repentance alongside us. This event is cosponsored by Har Mishpacha.
Does Christianity Matter for Judaism – and Vice Versa?
Saturday, August 19, 2017, at 3 p.m.
What can Christians learn from Judaism, and what can Jews learn from Christianity? What do we have to gain from inter-religious dialogue, and what challenges can such conversations pose? We will explore diverse answers to these questions, wrestling with sources from the New Testament to works of post-Holocaust theology. This event is cosponsored by Har Mishpacha and the United Methodist Church of Steamboat Springs.
Elias Sacks is an assistant professor of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. He works on the Jewish tradition, religious thought, and theories and methods in the study of religion. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Harvard University and studying at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he earned a master's degree in Religion from Columbia University and a doctorate in Religion from Princeton University. His research focuses on the modern period, with particular areas of interest including Jewish thought, Jewish-Christian relations, philosophy of religion, religion and politics, hermeneutics, and religious ethics.
These events were supported by Har Mishpacha and the United Methodist Church of Steamboat Springs, in partnership with the CU Boulder Program in Jewish Studies and the CU Boulder Office for Outreach and Engagement. They are part of the CU Boulder Peak to Peak Lecture Series, a program that brings CU Boulder humanities scholars to communities around Colorado to share innovative perspectives of historical figures, events and enduring questions.
CU Boulder Peak to Peak Lecture in Alamosa, Colorado
Brian Catlos is a professor of religious studies at CU Boulder and is one of the world’s leading figures in the study of Mediterranean history. His work centers on Muslim-Christian-Jewish relations and ethno-religious identity in medieval Europe and the Islamic World. In 2014, he published Infidel Kings and Unholy Warriors: Faith, Power and Violence in the Age of Crusade and Jihad, as well as Muslims of Medieval Latin Christendom, which won the Albert Hourani Book Prize, the most important award in the field of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies. His next book, Kingdoms of Faith: A New History of Islamic Spain, will be published in the spring of 2018 by Basic Books.This lecture was hosted by Adams State University in partnership with the CU Boulder Program in Jewish Studies and the CU Boulder Office for Outreach and Engagement. It was part of the CU Boulder Peak to Peak Lecture Series, a program that brings CU Boulder humanities scholars to communities around Colorado to share innovative perspectives on historical figures, events, and enduring questions. It was also part of the Adams State Faculty Lecture Series.
The Yellow Ticket Film Screening
The Yellow Ticket Film Screening
and Film Score Performance with Alicia Svigals and Marilyn Lerner
Friday, September 15 | 8:00 - 10:30 PM
Dairy Arts Center | 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder, CO 80302
The University of Colorado Boulder and the Dairy Arts Center were pleased to present a screening of a rare 1918 silent film, The Yellow Ticket, accompanied by an original film score composed and performed live by klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals with jazz pianist Marilyn Lerner. The screening, which was part of the CU at the Dairy series, took place on Friday, September 15, at 8:00 PM at the Dairy Arts Center, 2590 Walnut Street, Boulder, Colorado. It was followed by a panel discussion with the performers and CU Boulder faculty members.
The Yellow Ticket tells the story of a young Jewish woman from a Polish shtetl who is forced by anti-Semitic laws and customs to to lead a double life in a brothel while attempting to study medicine in Tsarist, Russia. The film, which was made at the end of World War I on the eve of the Russian revolution, also includes precious footage of the former Jewish quarter of Warsaw and the people who once lived there. Notably, it stars an adolescent Pola Negri, who would later become the legendary femme fatale of the silent era.
The film was accompanied by an original film score composed and performed by Alicia Svigals, the world’s foremost klezmer fiddler, with Marilyn Lerner, Toronto’s virtuoso new-music pianist. Svigals is a violinist and composer who co-founded the Grammy-winning band The Klezmatics and was a 2014 NEA MacDowell Fellow in composition. Lerner, a jazz pianist, has garnered recognition including Best Western Jazz Recording 2004 and the Montreal International Jazz Festival award for Best Composition. Together they perform this multimedia event across college campuses and festivals.
A panel discussion followed the film, featuring Svigals and Learner alongside CU Boulder faculty members Yonatan Malin, Associate Professor of Music Theory and Jewish Studies, Harumi Rhodes, Assistant Professor of Violin, and David Shneer, Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History, Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, and Professor of History, Religious Studies, and Jewish Studies.
Alicia Svigals is a violinist, composer and vocalist from New York. She is the world's leading klezmer fiddler and a founder of the Grammy-winning band The Klezmatics. Svigals is the recipient of the Foundation for Jewish Culture's 2013 New Jewish Culture Network commission for her new score to The Yellow Ticket. She is currently working on the score to a feature film based on Gertrude Stein’s novella Brewsie and Willie, and is collaborating with author Sarah Schulman on a musical based on Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel Enemies, A Love Story. In 2014, Svigals was a NEA MacDowell Fellow in composition.Photo Credit: Tina Chaden
Marilyn Lerner is a jazz pianist from Montreal. Her work spans the worlds of jazz, creative improvisation, klezmer and 20th century classical music. Lerner's original music received the Montreal International Jazz Festival award for best composition. Other recordings have garnered recognition such as Best Western Jazz Recording for her duo with legendary guitarist Sonny Greenwich. Additionally, Lerner conducts workshops on improvisation and on Jewish music.Photo Credit: Boris Iskovitch
The Yellow Ticket film screening was part of the CU @ The Dairy series, a new collaboration between the Dairy Arts Center and the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Music. This screening was supported by the the Dairy Arts Center, the University of Colorado Program in Jewish Studies, the University of Colorado Violin Studio in the College of Music, and the Roser Visiting Artist Endowment.
Event Photo Credit: Chris Randle
Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections Symposium
Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections Student Fellow Symposium
Monday, September 18, 2017 | 12:00 - 1:30 PM
Open to CU Faculty, Staff, and Students
The Program in Jewish Studies and the University Libraries' Special Collections and Archives celebrated the achievements of three graduate student fellows, Adi Nester, Amber Manning, and Jason Hogstad, who presented their research projects on materials in the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections. During the summer, these students worked with archivists in the PHAJ collections learning archival processing techniques. They also researched, designed, and curated their own projects and exhibits using the materials from the collections. In addition to publishing online, they presented their projects and findings at this symposium. This event took place on Monday, September 18 from 12:00 - 1:30 PM.
Adi Nester
The Program as Advertisement: Art and Propaganda in Concert and Theater Programs, Exhibition Catalogues, and Brochures in Germany 1913-1961 (The Richard E. Campbell Collection)
The Richard E. Campbell Collection holds materials related to Germany's cultural history from the early 1910s to the beginning of the 1990s. Among these materials is a significant number of programs, catalogues, and brochures from concerts, opera and theater performances, art exhibitions, and book fairs. The majority of these documents is from cultural events that took place between 1933 and 1945 in Germany although some items go back as early as World War I and further into the 1960s. Adi Nester's project offers a curated collection of these programs, brochures, and catalogues from before, during, and shortly after the period of Nazi regime in Germany. It presents these items in an interactive online exhibit that progresses chronologically from 1913 to 1961. The aim of the project is to explore the medium of the program, brochure, or catalogue as an instrument that reflects the social and ideological tendencies of its time. With the inclusion of related, supporting documents such as newspaper clippings, letters, and posters, (which are also part of the Richard Campbell Collection) this curated collection invites us to contemplate the various ways in which these different documents served as carriers of ideology even when they conveyed nothing more than "mere" titles and names.
Amber Manning
Women, Empowerment, and Midrash: An Examination of the Institute for Contemporary Midrash Records
In a letter of endorsement for the Institute for Contemporary Midrash (written after participating in a midrash training), Rosalind Glazer claims, simply, "for women–midrash matters" (Box 12, ICMR). In her archive exhibit on the Institute for Contemporary Midrash Records, Amber Manning seeks to examine and uncover why midrash is so important to and for women. Overall, documents from the collection indicate that contemporary midrash, both as a process and a product, creates a community for women, a community that facilitates a deeper relationship with the Torah, with Judaism, and with other women.
Jason Hogstad
Practicing Imperfection: A Zen Rabbi and the Limits of Historical Inquiry
Using materials found in the Alan Lew Papers, Jason Hogstad created an online exhibit, titled "Practicing Imperfection: A Zen Rabbi and the Limits of Historical Inquiry," that encourages audiences to evaluate how we use history to understand and discuss deeply religious experiences and lives. As a young man, Alan Lew (1943-2009) felt little connection with his Jewish faith, and after decades of searching, found a spiritual home in the meditative practice and mysticism of Zen Buddhism. By the 1980s, however, Lew wanted to reconnect with his Jewish roots and studied as a rabbi so that he could incorporate meditation into Jewish spiritual practice. His life was characterized by his desire to embrace what he described as a "realm beyond language." Here, then, is the problem with which this exhibit wrestles: history relies upon language to make sense of the past. Alan Lew, however, was not a fan of history, suggesting that it reduced people and experiences to intellectual arguments. Lew was right, at least in part. "Practicing Imperfection" asks audiences to think about how we can make sense of the life of Alan Lew, and in doing so, to wrestle with the limits of historical inquiry he identified.
Amber Manning and Adi Nester were supported by CHA– Jewish Studies Post-Holocaust American Judaism Summer Fellowships, and Jason Hogstad was supported by a History – Jewish Studies Archives Summer Fellowship. Graduate students: Interested in applying? Applications for Summer 2018 archive fellowships will open Spring 2018!
Learn more about the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections
The Program in Jewish Studies and University Libraries' Special Collections and Archives are building a collection of archival holdings focused on Judaism and the Jewish-American experience from roughly the late 1940s to the present.
The Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections exist to document the work of the individuals and groups, who transformed and in many cases are still transforming the American Jewish experience in the post-World War II period, and to make that experience accessible to students, researchers, and interested parties of all kinds.
SHE: Embodied Judaism Symposium & Exhibit
Who is She? The Shekhinah, which derives from the Hebrew word for "dwell or settle," is a feminine divine presence, guiding and protecting men and women everywhere. She is power, wisdom, and compassion and has influenced Jews from the ancient world through Second and Third Wave feminism and into the transgender and environmental concerns of the present day. Who is She, how has She empowered us, and how does She appear to us today?
SHE, the third biannual Embodied Judaism Symposium, explored the concept of Shekhinah, drawing on materials in the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections held at the University of Colorado Boulder. The symposium featured insight and embodied presentations by Rabbi Dr. Tirzah Firestone, Professor Joy Ladin, and Professor Samuel Boyd as well as an original performance from dancer and choreographer Robert Sher-Machherndl. The symposium was accompanied by an exhibit exploring the concept of Shekhinah, which was be on display in CU Boulder's Norlin Library.
The 2017 symposium and exhibit were hosted by the Program in Jewish Studies and the University Libraries' Special Collections and Archives and made possible by support from Rose Community Foundation, a Research and Innovative Seed Grant, and CU's Departments of Philosophy, History, Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, Theatre and Dance, Religious Studies, English, and Women and Gender Studies.
SHE
2017 Embodied Judaism Presentations
Professor Samuel Boyd: "Herstory": A Brief History of the Shekhinah
Boyd explored the historical backgrounds of the Shekhinah, showing how the concept of female divine presence appears in ancient Near Eastern texts, iconography, and religious practice. He traced this cultural background in the biblical texts, particularly Deuteronomy, and showed how conceptions of the Shekhinah evolved into early Judaism.
Samuel Boyd is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and a scholar of biblical texts and the ancient Near East. He researches the Bible through various critical methods and in light of wider historical contexts to understand both the production of these documents as well as their history of interpretation. His particular areas of research include the development of the Pentateuch (or first five books of the Hebrew Bible), legal hermeneutics in the ancient Near East, language ideology in the ancient world, and ritual theory applied to biblical texts.
Rabbi Dr. Tirzah Firestone: She Who Dwells Below
Firestone spoke on how, for over 2,000 years, feminine wisdom flowed through Jewish history like an underground river. Submerged by a dominant ethic that ignored her riches and refused her power, She spoke to those who were attuned only. In our day, this mythic face of divinity refuses to be ignored. She rises to the surface, embodied and unequivocal, breaking up old paradigms of understanding and demanding our attention.
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, PhD, was ordained by Reb Zalman Shachter Shalomi (of blessed memory) in 1992, and is the founding rabbi of Congregation Nevei Kodesh, Jewish Renewal Community of Boulder. Firestone is a Jungian psychologist and author, currently at work on a book about the healing of intergenerational trauma. She is widely known for her work on the confluence of Kabbalah and psychology and the re-integration of the feminine wisdom tradition within Judaism.
Robert Sher-Machherndl: Grasping Aspects of Shekhinah by Generating Movement Phrases
The aim of Sher-Machherndl’s originally choreographed piece was to embody co-existing female and male energies as they relate to the curious mythology of Shekhinah. Sher-Machherndl believes these elements have a constant presence in his choreography and performance, therefore key to the creative process. He was accompanied by Bailey Harper.
Internationally recognized choreographer Robert Sher-Machherndl was born in Vienna, Austria and has been granted the US visa ‘Alien of Extraordinary Ability’. He’s been principal dancer with Dutch National Ballet, Bavarian State Ballet and Nederlands Dance Theater, co-director of Salzburg Ballet and assistant artistic director at Scapino Ballet Rotterdam. He has choreographed for Vienna State Ballet, Finnish National Ballet, Bavarian State Ballet, Scapino Ballet, Salzburg Ballet, Lines Ballet BFA, Denver Arts & Venues, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, Santa Fe Dance Festival, Ballet Next and more, and he has taught at numerous dance institutions and universities. He’s been named ‘Dance Person of the Year’ by the Denver Post, a four-time winner of New York Ballet Builders Award, and was featured on the MTV Emmy Award winning series MADE. Sher-Machherndl is a founder of the acclaimed Lemon Sponge Cake Contemporary Ballet where he’s choreographed many new works and established a variety of educational programs.
Sher-Machherndl was accompanied by professional dancer, Bailey Harper. Harper, a Louisiana native and graduate of the University of Alabama, has been a professional dancer for almost ten years. She has danced with several different companies including the Montgomery Ballet, Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Hannah Khan Dance Company, and many other choreographic projects. Harper is finding that each company brings the opportunity to explore a new dance style, a deeper understanding of movement, and a more authentic performance experience. Currently, she is collaborating with Lemon Sponge Cake Contemporary Ballet and focusing on self-producing art projects.
Professor Joy Ladin: When I Grow Up, I Want to Be the Shekhinah: An Annotated Poetry Reading
Ladin read and discuss poems that dramatize the role of the Shekhinah in her gender transition, her development as a poet, and her growth as human being.
Professor Joy Ladin holds the Gottesman Chair in English at Yeshiva University. She is the author of seven books of poetry, including Lambda Literary Award finalists Impersonation and Transmigration; two new collections, Fireworks in the Graveyard (Headmistress Press) and The Future is Trying to Tell Us Something: New and Selected Poems (Sheep Meadow Press) are coming out in 2017. A work of creative non-fiction, The Soul of the Stranger, about reading the Torah from a transgender perspective, is due out in 2018 from Brandeis University Press. Her memoir of gender transition, Through the Door of Life, was a 2012 National Jewish Book Award finalist. Her work has been recognized with a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship and a Fulbright Scholarship, among other honors. Her poems and essays are available at joyladin.com.
About the Embodied Judaism Series
The Embodied Judaism Series, held biannually on the University of Colorado Boulder campus, draws on materials housed in the Post-Holocaust American Judaism Collections to explore the role of the body in Jewish life through public symposiums featuring academic scholars, prominent practitioners, and artistic performers, and multimedia exhibits aimed at academic and non-academic audiences. It is a partnership between the Program in Jewish Studies, University Libraries' Special Collections and Archives, and cosponsors.
SHE: Embodied Judaism Symposium is part of the Community Talks Series, made possible in part by a grant from Rose Community Foundation. A subscription series, Community Talks features nationally and internationally renowned scholars, authors, artists, and performers for themed public events with the goal of enriching community learning and expanding access to academic programming on Jewish culture and history. Learn more and subscribe today.
2018 Annual Holocaust Lecture
Inheritance Trouble: Migrant Archives of Holocaust Remembrance
2018 Annual Holocaust Lecture with Professor Michael Rothberg
In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27
Thursday, January 25, 2018 | 7:00PM - 8:30PM
Old Main Theater | CU Boulder campus
How should we think about the transmission of Holocaust memory more than seventy years after the defeat of Nazi Germany? What lessons do the events of the Shoah bear for a moment in which far-right political movements are once again on the rise? In order to address such questions, Professor Michael Rothberg considered immigrants’ engagement with the Holocaust in contemporary Germany. The works of art, literature, and performance that he discussed modeled alternative ways of remembering the Nazi genocide in the twenty-first century and suggested possibilities for an ethically and politically engaged memory work.
Professor Rothberg's lecture was presented in honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27.
About Professor Michael Rothberg
Michael Rothberg is the 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His latest book is Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (2009), published by Stanford University Press in their “Cultural Memory in the Present” series. He is also the author of Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation (2000), and has co-edited The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings (2003) and special issues of the journals Criticism, Interventions, Occasion, and Yale French Studies. He is currently completing The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators and Inheritance Trouble: Migrant Archives of Holocaust Remembrance (with Yasemin Yildiz).
Graduate Student & Faculty Colloquium with Professor Michael Rothberg
Thursday, January 25, 2018 | 11:30AM - 1:00PM
Please RSVP for location and pre-circulated reading.
Lunch will be served. RSVP to CUJewishStudies@colorado.edu.
Open to CU Faculty, Staff, and Students.
In this colloquium, Professor Michael Rothberg explored issues raised by his forthcoming book The Implicated Subject, which addresses questions of historical and political responsibility beyond the categories of victims and perpetrators. The book considers a variety of cases taken from diverse historical and geographical settings: from the legacies of the Holocaust, transatlantic slavery, and South African apartheid to diasporic engagement with Israel/Palestine and internationalist solidarity with Kurdistan and Vietnam.
Based on a draft excerpt from the book's introduction, we discussed the concepts of "implication" and the "implicated subject," which are attempts to theorize how we are connected to historical and contemporary forms of violence that may appear distant from us. This excerpt takes up responses to the murder of Trayvon Martin as well as theories of responsibility in the work of Primo Levi, Karl Jaspers, and Hannah Arendt.
This event was cosponsored by the Department of Anthropology, Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures, and the University Libraries at the University of Colorado Boulder.
2018 Visiting Author
How a Jewish Kid from Los Angeles Traveled to Wartime Iraq in Search of Roots, Reconciliation and His Father's Improbable Life Story
An Evening with Award-Winning Author and Journalist, Ariel Sabar
Old Main Theater | CU Boulder campus
Growing up in materialistic 1980s Los Angeles, Ariel Sabar's life seemed a far cry from his father's. Yona Sabar, Ariel's father, was a distinguished professor at UCLA and one of the world’s foremost experts on Aramaic, the 3,000-year-old language of the Jewish Talmud — and of Jesus. But Ariel saw his father as a stone-age relic, a walking fashion tragedy who couldn’t get his clothes to match and refused to see a barber about his out-of-control, Einstein-like hair. Yona had been born in an ancient village of Aramaic-speaking Jews in the mountains of Kurdish Iraq—the oldest corner of the Jewish diaspora — but for Ariel, his father might as well have been born on the moon. Then Ariel had his own son, and everything changed.
In his talk, Ariel weaved together the remarkable story of the Kurdish Jews and their Aramaic tongue with the moving tale of how a consummate California kid came to write a book about his family’s Kurdish roots. The book, My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography, one of the highest honors in American letters.
About Ariel Sabar
Ariel Sabar won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his debut book, My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for his Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq (2008). His second book, Heart of the City (2011), was called a "beguiling romp" (New York Times) and an "engaging, moving and lively read" (Toronto Star). His Kindle Single, The Outsider: The Life and Times of Roger Barker (2014), was a best-selling nonfiction short.
Sabar is also an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Harper's, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Mother Jones, and This American Life, among many other places. He graduated magna cum laude from Brown University. Learn more on his website, arielsabar.com.
Open to Students, Faculty, and Community Subscribers
Thursday, February 8, 2018 | 11:30AM - 1:00PM
Students, faculty, and community were given a chance to meet award-winning author and journalist Ariel Sabar and ask questions about his books and journalism.
This event was hosted by the Program in Jewish Studies and cosponsored by the Department of Ethnic Studies, Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, Department of English, Department of Religious Studies, and Mediterranean Studies Group.
Ariel Sabar's visit was part of the Community Talks Series, made possible in part by a grant from Rose Community Foundation. A subscription series, Community Talks features nationally and internationally renowned scholars, authors, artists, and performers for themed public events with the goal of enriching community learning and expanding access to academic programming on Jewish culture and history. Learn more and subscribe today.
Free Concert Open to All
Fourth Annual Student Hebrew Concert
Wednesday, March 7, 2018 | 6:00PM - 8:00PM
Old Main Theater, CU Boulder campus
Free and open to the public.
Singing! Dancing! Fun!
The students of CU Boulder's Hebrew classes and the Program in Jewish Studies presented the fourth annual Hebrew Schmooze-A-Palooza! The night was filled with a variety of musical and dance performances to celebrate Hebrew classes and community. Audience members sang along to renditions of well-known songs like "Hallelujah" and heard new music performed by Hebrew students!
2018 Sephardic Studies Visiting Scholar
Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: The Eurafrican Jews of Suriname, South America
Lecture with Professor Aviva Ben-Ur, Sephardic Studies Visiting Scholar
Suriname, a Dutch colony established on the South American mainland in the 1660s, was among the largest slave societies of the hemisphere. Its Jewish community, founded during the same decade, was granted exceptional liberties, including religious tolerance, unrestricted economic opportunities, and, most remarkably, the privilege to self-govern according to its own religious and secular laws. This political autonomy also empowered Jews to convert their slaves to Judaism, resulting in the rise of a sizeable class of people collectively known in the sources as “mulatto Jews” or “Jewish mulattoes.” In her talk, Professor Aviva Ben-Ur addressed the emergence of Eurafrican Jews, their legal status, cultural characteristics, social activism, and their experience of Jewish autonomy in a colony where upwards of 96 percent of the population was unfree.
About Professor Aviva Ben-Ur
Aviva Ben-Ur is Professor in the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and holds adjunct appointments in the Department of History and in the Programs of Spanish and Portuguese and Comparative Literature. She specializes in Atlantic Jewish history and slavery studies and is the author of Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society: Suriname in the Atlantic World, 1651-1825 (forthcoming with University of Pennsylvania Press), Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries and Synagogues of Suriname: Essays (Hebrew Union College Press, 2012) and Remnant Stones: The Jewish Cemeteries of Suriname: Epitaphs (Hebrew Union College Press, 2009), both co-authored with Rachel Frankel, and Sephardic Jews in America: A Diasporic History (New York University Press, 2009).
Identity Imperative: Ottoman Jews and Christians in Wartime and Interwar Britain
Open to Students, Faculty, and Community Subscribers
Thursday, March 15, 2018 | 11:30AM - 1:00PM
By the onset of World War I, thousands of Ottoman immigrants were living and trading in Britain. During wartime and through much of the interwar period, these multi-ethnic, multi-religious Ottomans were automatically branded as enemy aliens, even after the dissolution of the Empire, subject at times to internment and deportation to concentration camps, stripped of their freedom of movement, and uniformly barred from British citizenship. Drawing on hundreds of recently declassified naturalization applications pertaining to Armenian, Jewish, Syrian, and Greek Ottoman subjects, this colloquium paper discussed the prosopography of Middle Eastern newcomers, nativism and xenophobia, xenophilism, and the role of the state in shaping national and ethnic identities.
This event is hosted by the Program in Jewish Studies and cosponsored by the Department of History and the School of Law at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Aviva Ben-Ur's visit is part of the Community Talks Series, made possible in part by a grant from Rose Community Foundation. A subscription series, Community Talks features nationally and internationally renown scholars, authors, artists, and performers for themed public events with the goal of enriching community learning and expanding access to academic programming on Jewish culture and history. Learn more and subscribe today.
2018 Holocaust Remembrance Week
Children in a World of Genocide: From the Holocaust to 21st Century Refugees
Panel Discussion with Patricia Heberer-Rice, PhD
Monday, April 9 | 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
In honor of Annual Holocaust Remembrance Week, CU Anschutz's Center for Bioethics and Humanities, CU Boulder's Program in Jewish Studies, and cosponsors presented a panel discussion featuring United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Senior Historian Patricia Heberer-Rice, PhD. Dr. Heberer-Rice discussed the experience of child victims of the Holocaust, followed by panel discussion about genocide and the experiences of working refugee children in Colorado.
Patricia Heberer-Rice is the Senior Historian and director of the Office of the Senior Historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. She has served as an historian with the Museum's Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies since 1994. There she serves as a Museum specialist on medical crimes and eugenics policies in Nazi Germany. Dr. Heberer Rice earned her baccalaureate and masters degrees from Southern Illinois University; she pursued doctoral studies at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Maryland, receiving her Ph.D. from the latter institution. In addition to contributions to several USHMM publications, she has recently authored a source edition, Children During the Holocaust, a volume in the Center's series, Documenting Life and Destruction, appearing in 2011. A further publication, Atrocities on Trial: The Politics of Prosecuting War Crimes in Historical Perspective, co-edited with Juergen Matthäus, appeared in 2008 with the University of Nebraska Press.This program is the second annual CU-Anschutz-CU Boulder Holocaust Remembrance Week Lecture. It is hosted by CU Anschutz's Center for Bioethics and Humanities and CU Boulder's Program in Jewish Studies, and is made possible by the M.B. Glassman Foundation, the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Dr. William S. Silvers Endowment.
CU Boulder annually honors Holocaust Remembrance Week, hosting a variety of free events around campus.
Find a schedule of events below.
The 2018 Holocaust Remembrance Week is co-sponsored by the Department of Anthropology, CU's Hillel, the Department of History, the Honors Program, the Department of Religious Studies, the Program in Jewish Studies, the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, the Department of Women and Gender Studies, the Singer Fund in Jewish Studies, and Chabad.
2018 Week of Jewish Philosophy
Is Messianic Hope Worthwhile?:
The Case of Jacob Taubes
Colloquium with Professor Martin Kavka
2018 Week of Jewish Philosophy – Religion and Messianism
Thursday, April 26, 2018 | 11:30AM - 1:00PM
University of Colorado Boulder Campus
Lunch will be served. Please RSVP to CUJewishStudies@colorado.edu for pre-circulated reading and location information.
One needs only to go to a news website—any news website—to tap into hope for something better. In the language of the Jewish and Christian traditions, this hope has often been expressed as a hope for redemption, as a specifically messianic hope. The mid-twentieth century saw a debate about whether such hope was worthwhile, with the influential historian of Jewish mysticism Gershom Scholem (1897–1982) arguing for a cautious embrace of messianism as a historical force, and his erstwhile friend Jacob Taubes (1923–1987), one of the post-Holocaust era’s most controversial and notorious rabbis, arguing against this attitude. This seminar assessed Taubes's response to Scholem, and its implicit charge that Judaism should be more like Christianity.
Professor Kavka's visit marked the fourth annual Week of Jewish Philosophy, a joint initiative presented by DU's Center for Judaic Studies and CU's Program in Jewish Studies.
About Martin Kavka
Martin Kavka is Professor of Religion at Florida State University, where he teaches courses in Jewish studies and the philosophy of religion. He is the author of Jewish Messianism and the History of Philosophy (Cambridge University Press), which was awarded the first Jordan Schnitzer Book Award in Philosophy and Jewish Thought by the Association for Jewish Studies (2008), and the co-editor of five books, including Judaism, Liberalism, and Political Theology (Indiana University Press), as well as the co-editor of the Journal of Religious Ethics.
These events are hosted by CU Boulder's Program in Jewish Studies and DU's Center for Judaic Studies and are generously supported by CU's Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures and Department of Religious Studies.
2018 Week of Jewish Philosophy Events
In addition to the colloquium held at CU Boulder, Professor Kavka presented two events at the University of Denver. Please click on each title below for more details.
2018 Sondra & Howard Bender Visiting Scholar
Public Talks with Renown Photographer, Laurence Salzmann
2018 Sondra & Howard Bender Visiting Scholar
In Search of Turkey's Jews
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Turkey's Jews Revisited (1984-2012)
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The University of Colorado Boulder’s Program in Jewish Studies, the Boulder Jewish Community Center (JCC), and cosponsors welcomed reknown photographer, Laurence Salzmann, as the Program in Jewish Studies’ 2018 Annual Sondra and Howard Bender Visiting Scholar.
When photographer Laurence Salzmann and anthropologist Ayse Gürsan-Salzmann received an invitation from the Beth Hatfutsot Museum in Tel Aviv and the Quincentennial Foundation of Istanbul to document Jewish monuments in Turkey, a three-month stay became a five-year visit. From 1984-1989, the Salzmanns photographed and chronicled the lives of Turkey’s Sephardic Jewish community, in their first year alone visiting over 25 sites where Jews have lived for over 500 years. Twenty-five years later, on a return trip to Turkey from 2012-2013, the Salzmanns revisited the Jewish communities of Antakaya, Istanbul and Izmir, taking additional photos and videos of Turkish Jewish life.
In his public lecture, In Search of Turkey's Jews, Salzmann explored the Sephardic communities of Turkey, using his extensive collection of photographs and notes about the people the Salzmanns met, places they visited, and lessons they learned along the way. The lecture took place Thursday, April 19, 7:00PM - 8:30PM in the University Club building, Chancellor's Silver and Gold room on the CU Boulder's campus.
A selection of Salzmann’s photographs from his exhibit, Turkey’s Jews Revisited (1984-2012), were on display at the Boulder Jewish Community Center from April 9 – May 18, 2018. Salzmann also lead a lunchtime walk-through of this exhibition, Thursday, April 19, 11:30AM - 1:00PM at the Boulder JCC. Lunch will be served; space is limited. The prints in Turkey's Jews Revisited are pigment prints made by the photographer on archival papers.
About Laurence Salzmann
Laurence Salzmann is a native of Philadelphia who has worked as a photographer and filmmaker since the early 1960s. His projects document the lives of little known groups in America and abroad. He looks at the lives of people ranging from occupants of single room occupancy hotels in New York City to transhumant shepherds in Transylvania, residents of a Mexican village, and Philadelphia mummers. His photographic study of a nearly extinct Jewish community in Romania was published as The Last Jews of Radauti by Dial/Doubleday in 1983, with text by Ayse Gürsan-Salzmann. Supported by a Fulbright grant, Salzmann is currently working in Peru on a new project titled Misk'l Kachi // Sweet Salt (2016-2018).
Salzmann's photographic method is deeply informed by his background in anthropology and involves long-term participation in and observation of groups or events. His work illustrates how lives and events are shaped by the environments and conditions in which people live. Salzmann has won multiple awards for his work and has been featured in museums and galleries throughout the world.
The annual Sondra and Howard Bender Visiting Scholar series is generously supported by the Sondra and Howard Bender Visiting Scholars Endowed Fund, honoring the lives of Sondra and Howard Bender.
Learn More about Sondra and Howard Bender
These events were hosted by CU Boulder's Program in Jewish Studies and Boulder Jewish Community Center and are generously supported by a grant from CU Boulder's Graduate Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
Laurence Salzmann's visit was part of the Community Talks Series, made possible in part by a grant from Rose Community Foundation. A subscription series, Community Talks features nationally and internationally renown scholars, authors, artists, and performers for themed public events with the goal of enriching community learning and expanding access to academic programming on Jewish culture and history. Learn more and subscribe today.